


When They Break

by lonelywalker



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Background Caitlin/Ronnie, Coma!Barry, F/M, Families of Choice, Injury Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:39:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2825408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything Caitlin loves is broken apart the night the particle accelerator explodes. Some things can't be put back together again, but others heal even stronger. Spoilers up to 1x09.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When They Break

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peacefulboo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacefulboo/gifts).



Everything was almost okay until he woke up. Or, at least, she could tell herself that, even sitting around in dire hospital rooms packed with the injured and dying, even with the power fluctuating and the cell network down. All of that was the distraction she needed, and taking care of him most of all. 

Cisco had ridden with them to the hospital, but she’d sent him home, knowing he’d go back to S.T.A.R. Labs. The rumors were FEMA was already on the way, but no one on their staff would have any clue how to shut things down safely. And the rest of the S.T.A.R. Labs employees? Either in hospitals or at home themselves. The lab was a sinking ship, and there was no reason for any of them to go down along with it.

Harrison… She’d called him by his first name _once_ before last night, and now here she was filling out forms and talking to doctors and holding his limp, cold hand in hers. “I’m his fiancée,” she’d said, because he had no one else and it was the best lie she had. She even had the ring to prove it, but she couldn’t dwell on that now, on all the things they’d both lost. She had to function because nothing and no one else could, and who knew if Cisco would come back? If there was a time to catch the first plane to Tahiti, now was it.

Left alone in his room with three other patients and none of the overtaxed doctors, she read their charts, comforted their relatives, and took charge of the terrified, exhausted interns who intermittently poked their heads in. She was a doctor, after all, and if she couldn’t help Harrison, couldn’t help... couldn’t help _the rest of them_ , she’d help these three at least.

And then Harrison’s hand gripped hers and his eyes opened. He was pale, paler than was ever healthy, his tousled dark hair making him look almost paper-white by contrast. How often had she seen him without his glasses before? He had a habit of whipping them off to make a point, but not much. When she’d first met him, she wondered if he wore them purely to lessen the penetrating blue of his eyes.

“Caitlin…” He raised his head, blinked hard. “I...”

“It’s okay.” She squeezed his hand tighter. “I’m right here.”

She’d rehearsed what to tell him a hundred times over the last few hours. All the things he had to know, and had to know _now_ before some stranger told him. But all she wanted to do was baby him, hug him, tell him everything was going to be fine, no matter he was twice her age and the most competent person she’d ever met bar... No, she couldn’t think about him yet.

Harrison rubbed the heel of his hand against the bridge of his nose. His temple had been patched up with stitches and gauze. “My head is killing me.”

“You sustained a moderate concussion. What’s the last thing you remember?”

He squinted, as though the light or the memory was painful. “The…” He laughed. “I remember champagne floating.” And his face fell. “Oh God.”

“Something went very wrong. A dimensional barrier ruptured. We thought we’d managed to contain it, but…”

Now he was squeezing her hand. “Are you all right?”

“Me?” She was astonished by the question. “I’m fine.”

“Cisco?” Out of all his massed, exceptionally talented employees, of course he’d care about them first - the prodigies he’d tracked down personally and tempted away from other lucrative careers. The four of them had been like a family, the kind of family she knew Harrison had never really had. 

“He’s back at the lab, I think. The phones are down.” His next question rattled around her brain before he even said it, and she tried to cut him off: “Look, I have to tell-”

“And Ronnie?”

She couldn’t go one damn second without letting out a helpless sob. Not the endless crying of the other people she’d seen today, but any emotional reaction was _unprofessional_ , she rebuked herself. People died. People died _all the time_. But she still had Ronnie’s voice in her head, those last words over the intercom, the way he called her _Cait_ when no one else did.

Harrison's thumb was cold but gentle on her face, his hand cupping her cheek. “Shh, come here.”

And so she wept into his shoulder, in the arms of this poor man who had lost so much, as much and more than she had. He’d never told her about Tess, but there was enough information about him online and in interviews for her to piece it together, back in the days when she'd devoured every scrap of information on the dazzlingly clever and charismatic Harrison Wells (in retrospect, her crush had been pretty embarrassing). At least Ronnie had died a hero. He’d chosen how to go. That was something, wasn’t it? Something better than a random, horrific car accident. It made sense to her, to think like that, but her heart ached and all she wanted was to sleep. To go to sleep in Harrison’s arms and let him take care of her, as impossible as it was.

“I have to…” She sat up, clearing her throat, wiping her eyes. “You’re hurt.”

He smiled. “I assumed.”

Okay, hospital. Not hard. “You’re really…” She winced. “It’s not good.”

“Should I sit down?” His fingertips ran along her arm. He shouldn't be moving, she knew, not after surgery, with an IV in his other arm. “I can’t feel my legs, and as it’s unlikely they’ve given me an epidural… What is it? T5, T9?”

He’d never been to medical school, but he knew his biology better than she could bluff along in quantum physics. “You’re not supposed to be so calm about this.” Many patients were, though. Denial was a strong force. Or you could be optimistic and call it hope. “Are you sure you’re not in any pain? They said there was a problem with the anesthetic during surgery. You were screaming.”

“I don’t remember, which is probably for the best. Are my glasses here?”

They were dusty and a little scratched, but she’d kept hold of them. “I’m going to find your doctor.”

“You’re my doctor.” He let go of her and slipped his glasses on. “But you should go home, get some sleep, call your family.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

Another smile. Dimples. He must have been devastating in his twenties. Was still devastating now. “Then get me out of here as fast as you can.”

Cisco reappeared eventually, still in yesterday’s clothes, bearing hot coffee and pastries and news she didn’t want to hear. The phones were back up, which meant a flood of TV reports and tweets and God knows what else. She was afraid to look.

“They’re saying at least fifteen dead and a dozen more critical,” Cisco said quietly. They’d discussed in the corridor whether to tell Harrison, but he was awake and probably more lucid than they were. “They’ll be sending people to question you, Dr. Wells. I’ve secured the facility. I don’t think there’s any more danger. But it’s a disaster zone. Oh, and the gorilla got out.”

Caitlin looked between them. It was a blessing that Grodd wasn’t dead, but the idea of a genetically-enhanced gorilla wandering freely around Central City didn’t inspire much confidence. “You didn’t find… I mean…”

“I haven’t been inside. It's still not safe. But anything would’ve been vaporized instantly.” Cisco was looking as guilty as if it was his fault, barely able to meet her eyes. “I’m really sorry. I should’ve gone instead.”

“We’re not going to argue about this, Cisco.” Harrison could be quietly commanding even from a hospital bed. Once she’d thought he was so imposing partly because he was so tall: taller than Ronnie, sometimes seeming twice the size of Cisco. And now he’d... He’d never stand up again, barring miracles, and she didn’t believe in miracles. “Ronnie made a decision. We have to respect that. None of this is your fault. The entire responsibility lies with me.”

“It was an _accident_ ,” Cisco said. “A freak storm. A freak reaction.”

“He’s right,” she added. “You had a building full of the smartest people on the planet. If we couldn’t predict this, who could have?”

Harrison was scratching at his jaw. He hadn’t been able to shave. “Someone always has to take the blame. I should probably call my lawyers, if they’re still talking to me. There will be more lawsuits than any of us can count. And you two may want to distance yourselves immediately. Post online about how I’m an irresponsible maniac. Get on the news if you can.”

“We would never do that!” The very idea hurt, that concept of betraying him, and Cisco was nodding alongside her.

“But you should. I’m going to be a pariah. I’m being demonized even as we speak. You can get other jobs. Move to New York. Boston. Starling City.”

Caitlin raised her eyebrows. “Have you _seen_ the crime rates in Starling City?”

“We’re not leaving, man.” Cisco was rarely as emphatically decisive as this. “We’re family. One for all and all for one.”

“Then,” Harrison said slowly, “I may have a new project for you two, once you get some sleep. And if we’re going to be the Three Musketeers, I can only hope we find our D’Artagnan sooner than we think.”

They held a funeral for Ronnie two weeks later, with no body and few attendees. Harrison was out of the hospital and learning how to use the wheelchair Cisco had procured and set up for him. She should have insisted he stay in the hospital or go to a rehab center immediately, but he wouldn’t hear of it and she couldn’t make him, especially after everything he’d told them. It seemed crazy – would have seemed crazy to anyone else – but she and Cisco had verified his concerns. The freak accident at the accelerator had unleashed extraordinary forces that could affect people on a cellular level. “Like radiation poisoning,” Cisco said. “Except cooler.”

She’d seen the data, but it was still hard to put it into words. “Superpowers. We’re looking for people with superpowers.”

“They might be banal,” Harrison said. “But essentially, yes. Or I could be wrong.”

“Oh, when are you ever wrong?” She didn’t need to look at him to see his expression. “Apart from that one time.”

For weeks all they did was get the main sections of the lab back online and operational. Cisco made everything wheelchair-accessible, and did Harrison’s house, too, although as far as she knew he never went there. He’d taken to wearing all black – no white dress shirts anymore – and had very firmly told her to stop worrying about his health. He was in pain, had to be, even if it was mostly psychological. But every time she brought it up he swiftly changed the subject. He wouldn't let her be his doctor anymore.

“So there’s something,” Cisco said one morning.

She and Harrison were playing chess. Once upon a time they'd played squash, Harrison usually wiping the floor with both her and Ronnie. But chess was good too. “What kind of something?”

“Total flood of tweets. The power keeps going out at one of the hospitals. They have backup generators, but...”

“Sounds like a problem for the power company, not us.” But Harrison was listening with more interest than usual.

“Sure, but get this. One orderly is saying that there’s some guy there… Every time he goes into cardiac arrest, the lights go out.”

She took a sip of coffee. “I think he’s got the cause and effect backward.”

Harrison knocked over his king. “Let’s go and see for ourselves, shall we?”

His name was Barry Allen. He shouldn’t have reminded her of Ronnie – he was a lanky kid who looked younger than the age on his chart said – but far too many things still did. Barry was almost her age, and a scientist, and surrounded by mystified doctors.

“According to all the machines he’s dead,” an intern told them before she asked. “No sinus rhythm at all. But he’s breathing. And there’s nothing wrong with the machines.”

“There’s something very wrong with them,” Harrison said. Whether anyone recognized him was an open question, but he always spoke with more authority than she could muster. “They can’t measure his heart rate because it’s too _high_.”

She tried to see where he was coming from. “That's not possible. There’s a reason the machines don’t detect heart rates that high.”

“And yet…” 

He was right. And yet here was Barry Allen, still breathing, still warm to the touch, as though he’d just drifted off for an afternoon nap. 

Harrison tapped Cisco’s arm. “I’m sure one of your toys can confirm I’m right. Caitlin, find out who this boy’s next of kin is, please.”

A mission was exactly what they needed, even if it wasn’t much of one: convincing the Wests to let them take Barry to S.T.A.R. Labs, and then watching him sleep for months. Harrison seemed buoyed by it, though, and at least Barry was almost company for them during long, lonely hours of monitoring and rewiring. Plus the Wests came regularly, Iris bringing them coffee and almost endless conversation.

Everything improved as the months went by, although little changed. It was the lack of change she needed most. All she truly wanted was for everything in her life to be quiet and stable, to wake up every morning and get to work on time and find Cisco and Harrison there. The routine was what helped her to finally take off that beautiful ring Ronnie had given her and, after she sat there remembering every detail of the night he had proposed, to set it carefully in her nightstand and close the drawer.

She didn’t go out much, unless Cisco took her: he still had a circle of friends, and she fit in well with them. It was good to laugh and have a drink occasionally, to feel as though she was somehow thawing out, feeling the potential of a future that was something more than the numb aftermath of a disaster. Strange though it seemed, Barry Allen was often at the center of her thoughts: their sleeping golden boy, with miracles lying beneath his skin.

One night she went back to the lab to check the results of tests she’d left running, and found Harrison still there, just sitting with Barry, watching over him. It was late, but she wasn’t really surprised. If anyone had asked what Harrison Wells did at night, she could never have imagined him outside the lab at all. There had been many nights she'd tried to tempt him out, to dinner or a movie, and he’d only smiled and told her to have fun. Most of those nights, she wound up lying around on her couch, wishing she'd argued more or chosen to stay at the lab with him instead.

“You should go home,” she said now. “Get that sleep you’re always telling us about.”

He had his glasses off, hooked into the collar of his long-sleeve tee, and a mostly-empty scotch glass in his hand. His one vice, these days, though she’d never known of any others. “ _Home_ ,” he repeated, as though it were honestly some incomprehensible concept. “It’s such a long way away. Could take years to get there. Won’t you join us? Pour yourself a drink.”

She usually ordered girly cocktails and assured herself she was being ironic, but she sloshed a little whiskey into a glass. “Any change?”

“Not so far as any of our monitors can tell. But _inside_ him… That level of cellular regeneration. It’s incredible to think of what lies beneath the surface.”

They’d talked about it often. In Barry’s body could lie the secrets to curing any number of diseases. Even paralysis, although it wasn’t healthy for Harrison to obsess about that. Particularly since Barry had been in a coma for months, and she knew his prospects for a full recovery diminished week after week.

“He was given so much potential,” she said. “And we lost so much.” Never mind dreams of walking. Nothing could reconstitute atoms from the air. Some things could never be put back together again.

Harrison knocked back the rest of his scotch. “Detective West said that Barry’s mother died when he was very young. We all lose our share.”

“Does it get easier?” she asked. And there was that look again, the same one from the only time she’d ever called him _Harrison_ out loud. They’d been working late on another night a year or two ago, and Ronnie had pulled out beer and Cisco had rustled up a deck of cards. Somewhere in all the rounds of poker she’d been laughing/arguing with the boys and demanded: “Come on, Harrison, back me up here!” He hadn’t said anything about it, had never told her not to, but he’d looked just like this, with something distant and curious in his eyes.

“It does,” he said finally. “But now and again something reminds you, and it hurts like it did the first moment you realized.”

She froze. “Oh God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-”

“But it’s been easier,” he continued, “since I met you. You’re very like her, and very unlike her. Both of which have made the last few years vastly better than the decade before.”

That _very unlike her_ was good to hear. At least he hadn’t hired her for the wrong reasons. She’d seen _Vertigo_ , after all. “You’re not very like Ronnie, are you?”

“Not at all. Except, perhaps, in the way he felt about you.”

He was so beautiful and so broken in that moment that she took a step toward him before she caught herself. How long since anyone had touched either of them with affection or love? But he wasn’t Ronnie, and she wasn’t Tess, and this was a very bad late-night scotch-fueled idea. She picked up her bag and went home alone.

The next night though, she drove to his home when she knew he would be there (perhaps he knew she would come). When he opened the door, she leaned down and took his face in her hands and kissed him, as she'd wanted to do long ago, in the months before Ronnie swept her off her feet. And then she took him to bed. Making love was less awkward than she’d imagined it might be, when she didn’t even really know if he _could_ , at least in the way she was used to. But he touched her and filled her like no one ever had except Ronnie, and she never reached to feel for his scars in the darkness. The rest of him was more than enough.

“Harrison,” she murmured while he held her. He was warm and shockingly muscular for a man who almost lived in an electric wheelchair. 

He stroked her tangled hair. “Cait.” And then she knew what that look had been in his eye. An arrow through the heart with the whisper of a name. She rested her head against his shoulder and went to sleep in his arms. 

Hours later, she was still there and he was still with her, both of them wrapped up in blankets and each other on a September morning. Lying there together, it was almost as if none of it had ever happened, or at least that they’d finally managed to recover something from the rubble of their past lives. Nine months since the accident. Enough time for a new life to begin. 

“Hey,” she said, tapping a knuckle against his shoulder. “We’re going to be late.”

When he woke up, smiling and saying her name, everything was finally almost okay again.


End file.
